#TravelGoals 2017: 5 music pilgrimages for the GQ man

Visit the birthplace of punk at world’s end, hit up a secret Pete Seeger festival in Manipur, chill at the Montreux Jazz Festival and more

This year: Make a musical pilgrimage to North-Eastern India, chill at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, visit the birthplace of punk at world’s end (at 430 King’s Road, London), get your groove on at the Pitchfork festival in Chicago (and Paris) and pay homage to former greats like James Brown, Billie Holliday, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Gladys Night and Jimmy Hendrix at New York’s Apollo Theatre.

5 music pilgrimages for the GQ man

1/5

Image: Adil Hassan

Make a musical pilgrimage, North-Eastern India

Going to Ziro, NH7 Shillong or Hornbill seems like the greatest weekend of your life… in theory. Until you realize it means days without a shower, sodden venues and hundreds of other people who also haven’t bathed. But it’s all worth it for the experience of watching the coolest indie bands – Donn Bhat/Parekh & Singh/Skrat – from a few feet away. This year, go beyond the usual suspects with Orange (a week post Hornbill in December) in Dambuk, Arunachal Pradesh, a mashup of great gigs and adventure sports like off-roading and white-water rafting. There’s also the Brahmaputra Beach Festival in January; as well as Lou Majaw’s Bob Dylan Festival in Shillong, an annual two-day bash to celebrate the Nobel laureate’s birthday (May 24 for you Dylan virgins) that’s been going strong since 1972. Those in the know will be at Imphal’s Where Have All The Flowers Gone?– a three-day festival in May dedicated to the late folk music pioneer (and Dylan’s mentor) Pete Seeger – secretly active in the village of Andro, 26km from the Manipur capital. Using music as a tool for social change, it’s a scaled-down version of Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello and Serj Tankian’s Axis of Justice concerts. But in the wilderness.

Words: Pauline Zonunpuii

Image: www.montreuxjazz.com

Chill at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland

It’s obvious that Claude Nobs didn’t spend too much time thinking about a name. A former cook-turned-tourism officer, he thought it would be a good idea for jazz musicians to play in a Swiss town called Montreux, and promptly founded a festival to make it happen. Half a century later, Nobs has passed but his nonchalance has a lot to do with why thousands of people will make their way to the 2017 festival from June 30 to July 15.

Here’s a suggestion: Don’t go just for the jazz. Sure, Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald played here. But Nina Simone and David Bowie have graced these stages in the past too, as have Prince and Radiohead. Explore the private listening zones at the Montreux Jazz Café @ EPFL, world-class wineries like Corniche Lavaux and La Cave Vevey-Montreux and the medieval Château de Chillon. Go out of respect for the late Leonard Cohen, who opened the festival in 2013, allowing the sounds of his gorgeous “Hallelujah” to reverberate across the Alps. Stay at the Fairmont Le Montreux Palace to feel like a movie star. And if you still need more reasons, know that this unpretentious event lets you get tipsy on the shore of Lake Geneva while listening to spectacular music. Be like Nobs; don’t overthink it.

Words: Lindsay Pereira

Visit the birthplace of punk at world’s end, 430 King’s Road, London

Sometime in the summer of 1975, a young lad sporting a shock of green hair and a home-made T-shirt that said “I hate Pink Floyd” walked into a Chelsea boutique. He didn’t know it then, but that moment would change the history of music, pop culture and fashion. Because the young lad’s name was John Lydon, and the shop he had just entered was SEX, the kinky, transgressive fetish boutique run by raconteurs and art-savants Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. Alongside Glen Matlock, Steve Jones and Paul Cook, the trio would create the phenomenon that were the Sex Pistols and kickstart the punk revolution. It’s hard to overestimate the influence of punk rock on contemporary culture – you can credit (or blame) it for everything from Nirvana to Etsy, from Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” to Rihanna’s faux hawk. And it all begun in that tiny 450sqft shop that McLaren once called “a cross between a school gym and a padded cell.” If that’s not enough for you to make the trek over to 430 King’s Road, just remember that since the Eighties, Westwood has used the shop – now called World’s End – as a testing ground for her most outre, forward-thinking fashion. From punk to the “New Romantics”, from bondage outfits to “Climate Revolution” T-shirts, this little Victorian building is as important to modern culture as any museum or gallery.

Words: Bhanuj Kappal

Get your groove on at the Pitchfork festival, Chicago and Paris

When Pitchfork launched a three-day music festival in Chicago in 2006, it was still just another hipster, music website. A decade on, Pitchfork has become the gatekeeper of the new guard in international music; has had titles like “tastemaker” conferred on it; and its festival is a fantastic showcase of the journal’s accumulated might. Held annually at Chicago’s Union Park, and in Paris since 2011, it’s got eclectic line-ups, great food and a deeply indie vibe: The sort where, say, Kendrick Lamar and Anderson .Paak performed before they became household names around the world; where artists as low-key as Sufjan Stevens give grandiose performances in large feather wings; where pop divas like Carly Rae Jepsen can incite mosh pits; indie songstresses like FKA Twigs turn into A/V phenoms; and where rap meets saxophones, and collaborations tend to be spontaneous and stirring. If you’re looking for an alternative to the immediate release of raging on chemicals and brain-deadening BPM, this is it.

Words: Nidhi Gupta

Pay homage to former greats at the Apollo Theater, New York

There’s a reason why the body of James Brown made its way towards the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York City, on December 28, 2006. The Godfather of Soul had died of heart failure two days ago in Atlanta, Georgia. It was at the Apollo, however, that his 24-karat gold coffin was placed, brought there by a carriage drawn by white horses, surrounded by thousands of mourners who had waited for hours to bid him farewell.

What started as a burlesque theatre in 1913 is today a venue respected worldwide for its role in the history of Black America. By the Thirties, it was the largest employer of African-American theatrical workers, hosting the debuts of legends like Billie Holiday and Lena Horne. Among the stars making their first appearance here were Dinah Washington and Sammy Davis, Jr, followed by John Coltrane and Miles Davis in the Forties and Thelonious Monk in the Fifties. Winners of its Amateur Night in the Sixties included Gladys Night and Jimi Hendrix.

To visit the Apollo at any time is a blessing. Go now not for the great performances it will line up (as it always does), but because few venues are as storied, as emblematic of a race and as powerful a witness to humanity’s continuing struggle for equal rights. Visit to honour its guests from the past; artistes who just happened to be among the most important to walk this earth.